82.48 Study of Eve

c. 1925

Oil on glass, 19 1/4 x 14 1/4" (49.5 x 35.5 cm)

Provenance: Galerie Voemel, Dusseldorf 1928

In 1911, Franz Marc invited Campendonk to join him in the small Bavarian village of Sindelsdorf. In this isolated region, removed from the confusion of city life and sophisticated artistic habits, the artists of the Blaue Reiter–Marc, Campendonk, Kandinsky, and August and Helmuth Macke–communed with nature and discovered the primitive power of folk painting and carving.

One of the most significant discoveries for all the artists was the centuries-old methods of Hinterglasmalerei–reverse-glass painting, used by Bavarian peasant artists to create votive paintings in rich, glimmering colors. In Sindelsdorf, every member of the group experimented with this technique, sitting together in the evenings and painting on glass. (A 1915 letter from Elisabeth Macke to the Marcs speaks of “our wonderful glass paintings,” painted together the summer before–indicating that the women also participated in the artistic process.) While their efforts often differed from their folk-art models in terms of theme and composition and even in formal appearance, these experimental works revealed the artists’ fascination with the luminosity made possible by placing opaque paint on a glass surface. That numerous examples of Bavarian folk painting on glass appeared in the Blaue Reiter Almanach is evidence of the inspiration the artists found in this naive form.

After these enthusiastic early attempts with the technique, most of the artists abandoned the genre. Campendonk alone of the group continued to incorporate Hinterglasmalerei into his repertoire; indeed, glass in every form fascinated him, as his later work in stained glass attests. Glass seemed an ideal medium for conveying Campendonk’s dreamlike imagery and for the evocation of luminosity which he sought. In the mid-20s, Campendonk produced a large number of glass-paintings of some of his favorite themes: harlequins and other commedia dell’arte figures, and whimsical evocations of peasant life.

In style, this painting, labeled by Pohl as a study of Eve, is very similar to works such as Girl with Flower. The nude figure is placed squarely in the middle of the composition, surrounded by fantastic, imaginary animal-figures and near-hieroglyphic symbols meant to convey a mood of cosmic mystery. Rather than a specific depiction of Eve, the painting was probably conceived by Campendonk to symbolize the universal themes of mysterious woman and primitive innocence–his most common artistic concerns at the time. The deep blues of the background create a jewel-like surface on the glace, an effect by which Campendonk consciously hoped to evoke the power of medieval illuminated manuscripts.

Through the use of the reverse-glass technique, Campendonk obviously alluded to Bavarian folk elements; he also demonstrated his enthusiasm for the power of primitive art in the other imagistic references he included. The background patterns and the odd little cat-like figure allude not only to the idea of feminine sexuality, but are in form reminiscent of Javanese art–a common source of decorative images for his mentor Thorn-Prikker, and one certainly known to Campendonk.

Campendonk first worked with woodcut after 1916–several years after Franz Mark, Kandinsky, and the artists of Die Brücke had recognized the powerful graphic possibilities of the medium. Unlike the Brücke artists, Campendonk never experimented with the medium’s basic materials, avoiding any manipulation of the surface structure of the wood. Always concerned with conveying a sense of delicate beauty, he concentrated in his woodcuts solely on the contrast of black an white and the linear formulation of the surface. In both of these works, Campendonk’s fascination with the magical and the fantastic is evident. Each figure, while imbedded in a near-ornamental framework of flattened forms, appears to be floating in magical seas of biomorphic images, animal figures, and cosmic signs; as one contemporary wrote, Campendonk’s images “move as if in a dream.” Campendonk found inspiration for his magical evocations in a variety of sources: Bavarian folk art, primitive sculpture, and the traditional textile design of Indonesia. Most evident here is his debt to his teacher Thorn-Prikker, whose Jugendstil sense of the creative powers of decorative line influenced Campendonk long after his studies in Krefeld.